Avengers star Jeremy Renner has opened up about his belief that he 'died' after he was crushed by a snowplough on New Year’s Day 2023.
Renner, 54, had been outside his home in Lake Tahoe with his 27-year-old nephew, Alexander Fries, when he saw the snowcat plough begin to roll towards his nephew, who he feared could be crushed between the plough and a nearby truck.
The actor attempted to hit the 'stop' button on the machine, but instead he slipped and fell in front of it, leaving him pinned down as the plough 'slowly, inexorably, monotonously, ground over [his] body'.
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Opening up about the incident in his new book, My Next Breath, Renner detailed the injuries he sustained as a result of being crushed, and remembered waiting for help to come.
Renner believes his life ended while he lay under the machine, as he wrote: "As I lay on the ice, my heart rate slowed, and right there, on that New Year’s Day, unknown to my daughter, my sisters, my friends, my father, my mother, I just got tired. After about 30 minutes on the ice, of breathing manually for so long, an effort akin to doing 10 or 20 push-ups per minute for half an hour … that’s when I died.
"I died, right there on the driveway to my house. Though I’d broken more than 30 bones and lost six quarts of blood (I’d find out the true extent of the injuries only later), an even greater danger to me as the minutes dragged by on the ice was hypothermia.”
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“I know I died - in fact, I’m sure of it.”
Renner described how EMTs said his 'heart rate had bottomed out at 18', which meant he was 'basically dead'.
The actor then shared his experiences of what he felt in that moment, saying: “When I died, what I felt was energy, a constantly connected, beautiful and fantastic energy. There was no time, place, or space, and nothing to see, except a kind of electric, two-way vision made from strands of that inconceivable energy.”
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Renner recalled feeling an 'exhilarating peace', and remembered being able to see his 'lifetime'.
"I could see everything all at once,” he said, adding: “in death there was no time, no time at all, yet it was also all time and forever.”
Ultimately, however, Renner felt a force that told him not to 'let go'.
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“I didn’t f**king die," he said.
Renner was airlifted to hospital after emergency responders arrived, and, looking back, the actor pinpointed the one error that ended up completely changing his life.
He explained: “I didn’t engage the parking brake, or disengage the steel tracks. In that moment – an innocent, critical, life-changing moment – that tiny but monumental slip of the mind would change the course of my life for ever.”
Renner's book was released on April 29.
Topics: Jeremy Renner, Avengers, Celebrity, Health
Emily Brown